Starting a new exercise routine is tough, and when your body is in pain from getting into shape it's hard to really enjoy yourself. The Wall Street Journal takes a look at what it is that makes us hate exercise, and what we can do about it.

Like many things, exercise is all about perspective. If you're starting a new exercise regiment you might hate it simply because you're pushing yourself way too hard without realizing it:

From couch potatoes to Olympic athletes, everyone has a physical capacity for exertion, beyond which the body becomes stressed and begins to feel bad. How much stems from genetic factors-things like lung capacity, oxygen transport and the rate at which oxygen is used in the muscle cells-is still a subject of scholarly debate... But many sedentary people push beyond their intrinsic range when they try to exercise too quickly or intensely, which can make them hate the activity and want to stop.

The stress comes when you reach your "ventilatory threshold." When you breathe, you expel carbon dioxide equal to the amont of oxygen you take in, when you're working hard, you expel more carbon dioxide and the body finds that stressful. Essentially, the harder you work, the less oxygen you're getting and the worse you feel. For sedentary people, you might reach this threshold within as little as a minute. To track this, it's all about finding your exercise sweet spot and accepting it might be a little low when you're starting out.

It's not just your body's ventilatory threshold though. It's also about how you interpet pain and exertion:

How people interpret some of the physical sensations of exertion or fatigue, such as buildup of lactic acid in muscle or increases in body temperature, can also influence whether they stick with an exercise routine. Some people tend to read such physical cues as a sign of a good workout or progress, whereas many sedentary people just find them uncomfortable or painful, say researchers.

Essentially, when you feel terrible after a workout, you're less likely to stick with your new routine. After all, we're trained to do the exact opposite of what makes us feel bad. In both cases, it's all about finding the perfect balance of a routine you'll stick to. The reason people don't like exercise is because they push past their limits and that makes them feel terrible. If you're sedentary, start small with lighter exercises and work your way up from there (if walking is too tough, try water exercises or recumbent biking). It'll take a long while, but you'll eventually increase both your ventilatory threshold and you'll understand sensations like fatigue better so you know when to quit.

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It's all about knowing your limits, and balancing how hard you're pushing yourself with your own thresholds. It's not always good to push hard when you're starting out, because that might be the exact thing that makes you quit.